Providence
by Snoweria
Summary: Merrill knew it was highly dangerous. She could get caught and to not run when she had the chance was a very stupid, stupid thing to do. Yet to save one's life, she decided to be so. (Fenris/Merrill)


**AN:**

**Hello fellow Fenris/Merrill and Dragon Age fans! (For those who's against this pairing, I suggest turn back now because this fic is pure Fenrill.)**

**I have had this story in mind since my first playthrough of Dragon Age 2. Haven't had the guts to post this until now. **

**Before you read this story, I apologize for my grammar and hope there will be someone who will like to help BETA this story for me. Please do let me know through mail or review if you will like to help me.**

**I am still unsure if I should write the smut scene in this story or just skipping the good part, so I'm rating it T for starters.**

**This story is set before Merrill and Fenris met Hawke.**

* * *

**Chapter 1**

She knew she shouldn't have walked out on her clan, but she did. She should have listened, she usually would but not on this matter, not this time.

She's an adult now, her vallaslin was prove enough and she'd made her decision and it was final.

An outcast now she was, all alone. A young wondering Dalish blood-mage, would soon be branded apostate, maleficarum, endangering herself to being hunted then captured by either the templars or slavers, whoever should comes first. Then there was the risk of demonic possession from over practicing the forbidden magic she had grown accustomed to, she would then be an abomination and no one would be there to strike her down where she'd turned, innocent's blood would be on her hands until someone capable enough came along to stop her and that could be years, even decades. Worse scenario she had in mind was, she would ended up being a feracious wild animal's meal, or the darkspawn's! It could be even worse if those demonic creatures would let her live, just to abduct her to the Deep Roads, force feeding her with tainted deceased flesh, slowly turning her into a horrifying terror that is Broodmother, producing Shrieks for the darkspawn army. She had known all this a letter from Lyna, an old friend, the Warden Hero of Ferelden sent her clan after the Blight.

Merrill admitted to herself that she would hate being sent to the circle, or to ended up a slave for life or dead, killed by either templars, beasts or darkspawn, or experiencing the nightmare of having to turn into a broodmother. Even after knowing all the dreadful contingencies she had put herself into, she would never give up on what she was doing, for the sake of her people's future.

She would reclaim what was lost of her people, even if she had to carry the burden herself without her clanmates nor the Keeper's approval, and with the Eluvian she could. The Eluvian must be restored, that was what she had been researching. No matter the cost, even if she had to resort to blood magic, which she already did, to the entire clan's dissapointment, she will one day fix the mirror.

She was sacrificing herself for her people, the elven race of Thedas, and one day they would acknowledge her effort. _One day_ _they will_ she told herself with assurance. All she had to do was focus on the research, think diligently, and she could even find more than one way to revivify the mirror. Most importantly, she had to be able to control her blood magic so as to not let the demon took control over her both mind and physical being, thus she cannot afford to be reckless. She made sure she suspended the use of blood magic, at the very least for fouty-eight hours or so.

Sundermount wasn't the best mountain in Thedas. Merrill herself thought it was a horrible place, but it still had inappreciable greenish parts of Earth, so not entirely bedrocks and boulders. There were sparse trees and other plants to be found, some barks and shedding leaves on the hard ground, several evergreen trees, small stream flowing down from the top of the mountain, not a pleasant place for bathing since it was shallow and rocky, but it was better than nothing. There were rumours the mountain was haunted, which was true. She could feel the thin veil around her and the higher up you go, the more horrors you would find. There was even an ancient demon sealed somewhere within the peak of the mountain.

She missed Ferelden more than she thought she would. The smell of nature (but obviously not the part where it smelled like wet dogs), the grasses, the muddy dirt, all those tall trees to be climbed upon. She might probably go there by the end of the fifth month Molioris, that would be three weeks away from now. There was little choice really, wasn't really much of safe place on Sundermount for a lone young woman like her to camp.

She wasn't used to the loneliness. Wondering alone, this far from her clan wasn't as easy as she had thought. In her days living with the Sabrae clan, she would share the tent with the Keeper or on some nights she would be gathering with her friends around the great camp fire.

The tent she had set on was always pleasant enough to sleep in and to do research, she avoided setting the camp too higher up the mountain. Five days on one place that was her rule, then she would move on to another area, where she noted never to be too far away from the Dalish camp. She settled her camp far and high enough on the mountain for her clans-mate not to notice, but for her to be able to detect and overlook them from the far. She was still missing all of them after all the harsh remarks they had thrown on her, especially the Keeper, the one who had been raising her from when she was just a little da'len until the day she departed. The elder elf didn't join in the judgmental crowd then, she tried coercing Merrill to forget about the Eluvian and stay, but of course the young elf didn't.

It had been two weeks since the day she left her clan.

No improvement on her research part still. Found nothing useful in fact.

When disappointment had taken the toll on her, she decided to take a break on her study for three days and she was now on the end of her first day.

Minimal fire light on a small lantern in her tent was sufficient enough to keep herself warmed and guarded up for the night. It wasn't just the small lantern that had been keeping her safe every night, so does her tent, her warm bedroll and especially her three favorite romance story book; 'The Red String of Fate', 'Immortal's Love' and best of all, and the juiciest of all three 'The Lusty Elven Maiden', made her toes curls everytime she read that one. Merrill was glad she found the book from Hahren Paivel's book's collection the time she had secretly sneaked into his tent, looking for books for the research on the mirror before her departure. Well, she wasn't exactly stealing, she was just_ borrowing _them, provided she made it back to the clan successfully and alive in one piece. She should probably write a note behind each of the front covers of every books to whoever should fine them if she ended up dead, just in case.

Nevertheless, she was glad all those three books could distract her from getting spooked on occasional sleepless night alone on a haunted mountain.

Very so often she would found a scenario like this one, '...his rugged voice whispered, warm breath tickling her ear, 'Tonight, I shall make you mine.' His hands were-'

"This way!"

The distant male voice startled Merrill and with haste, she got out of her bedroll, instinctively blowing out the fire of her lantern.

She stayed in the darkness of her tent for sometime as she was listening to the sound of foot steps and her heart beat racing furiously against her ribcage. There must be at least five of them, she speculated.

"That damned elf running like a coward!" the words were spoken with anger in between gritted teeth.

He said elf, which meant he was most definitely not an elf, Merrill guessed he was a human and on top of that, he was more likely a slaver.

The fact frightened Merrill to her bones, her body was trembling in fear at the thought of being found, captured and to be a slave for life. She had heard stories, rumors, of how horrendous being a slave could be. Were those slavers here for her? But that wasn't possible, she had not encountered anyone. There were the ocassional rabbits and mountain rams though, and she did fought a small pact of two spiders, tough fight that one since Merrill detest spiders, but at least there were no humans. Unless animals could talk now! And they told humans they saw an elven woman camping around the mountain.

"Relax boss, we will find him one way or another." another man with a mousy voice said. "He's bleeding and poisoned, he can't be too far. Even if we lost him, he would just end up dead anyway." their footsteps were getting further away.

Him? That meant they were after some male elf and not her. She felt a slight of relief as she let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. But she couldn't help but wonder, what if that male elf was one of the Dalish, one of her clansmen? It cannot be, because if he was, the entire clan must be on the slavers tails by now, and yet...

Merrill crawled out from her tent with as little sound as possible and look over the hedge for any sign of her clan hunters alarming the entire camp.

To her ease, all the hunters were patrolling around the camp as they usually do. Unaware of the happenings higher up the mountain.

"Are you bleeding stupidness in there? If we lost him or worse we let him die, that magister will kill us!" the first voice spoke again, his voice getting further away. "And you, Jegor, you! You are lucky I didn't kill you for poisoning him. You will be the one to face the consequences if that elf gone dead!"

Instead of breaking camp, Merrill couldn't stop herself from sneaking to where the voices of those slavers were coming from. She couldn't just ran away when she had learnt that there was a fellow elf out there dying and waiting to be captured. If she could find him first, she could nurse him and help him find the Dalish, if that was what he wished for.

"But boss, he's too strong! 'Bout to crush my heart he did. What was I suppose' to do?"

"Does knocking him out comes to mind?! And for the rest of you who'd let him escaped. I swear, one of these days I am going to kill you, the lot of you! Bloody fools. I don't know why I bother keeping you bookends around!"

Merrill, who was still following behind thought maybe she could avert their attention. Keeping the slavers from going the way that injured elven man was going. She knew it was highly dangerous. She could get caught and to not run when she had the chance was a very stupid, stupid thing to do. Yet to save one's life, she decided to be so.

When she noted the time was right to make her move, she began casting Stonefist and hurling it on a frail old tree standing further from the slavers than to Merrill, the tree itself stood on a high cliff that if one fell, one would be led to the foot of Sundermount.

"What was that?"

"That's probably him. Maybe he's trying to descend the mountain from there!" one of the fools suggested.

"Ready your weapons boys!" the leader led his little gang of slavers to where the Stonefist collided.

Soundlessly tailing the slavers from behind until they had reached the cliff, Merrill readied herself to cast another spell as she got close enough.

"Hey, who's there!" one of the slavers saw her shadows.

There was no need to hide herself anymore, so she stood before the five slavers and cast Horror spell on them, followed with another strike of Stonefist, the slavers fell, except for one, four fingers seen desperately hanging by the cliff. "You bitch! I'll gut you!" from his voice Merrill reckon he was the leader. Frowning, Merrill shot another spell of Lightning Bolt to finish the job and cringed when the slaver fell with a loud cry, until she could hear nothing of sorts that prove the slavers are still nearby.

With immediate haste, she ran back to where the slavers had mentioned the male elf was heading towards.

* * *

Walking back to her camp, Merrill had her head hung low and her shoulders were limping forward in disappointment. She couldn't find body nor hair of that elven man.

She had hoped he had escaped, and it would be best if he had went downhill to find the Dalish, instead of going further up the mountain. Her clan could and would help him, more so than she could and yet she feel saddened. It was hard to believe that she would felt it. Merrill missed and wanted companionship; someone to talk to, anyone and she just realized this now.

Maybe it was the reason why she hadn't been on top of her duty for the past few days.

_Focus Merrill, focus!_ she admonished herself.

She'd reached her camp when she tripped over whatever it was, that was definitely not a rock.

Merrill could feel her arms and right knee twinged in pain when it reached the ground, unfortunately on the pebbly part of the ground. With a wince, she got herself seated up and instinctively examined her knees and arms. The former's laceration was expected, there was blood apparent on her brown legging, peeled off at the patella part and there was dirt. The latter however, not so, protected by her leather gloves.

The culprit who had caused Merril's fall was laying on the ground, in a living form of an elf, unconcious. One side of his face facing the ground, hair as white as snow wolf's hide appeared silvery under the moonlight, visible skin was covered in dirt and blood, unusual valasslin were visible from chin and down under his dark spiky armour and a great two-handed sword still clutched in his hands.

"Oh Mythal! Are you alright?!" Merrill shook the elf gently on his arm.

Getting no reaction from the stranger, with great effort Merrill turned his body so that he was on his back and she proceed on checking his pulse then to his forehead.

_He has a fever, but he's still alive._ Merrill smiled and sighed a relief.

One thing she wanted to know was how did this man ended up unconscious by her tent? She thought he was heading the other way. Maybe he had found his way here when she averted those slavers attention. Never mind that! She could worry about that later. She needed to do something to save this man, and quick.

* * *

**So how's the first chapter? Review to let me know.**


End file.
